Kopecky Family Band, Striking Matches to Join Music City New Year’s Eve Lineup

Nashville, Tenn. – Indie rock group Kopecky Family Band and singer/songwriting duo Striking Matches will join the New Year’s Eve ‘Bash on Broadway’ lineup headlined by Grammy award-winning Country singer/songwriter Hank Williams Jr., the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp (NCVC) announced today. The music-filled evening will also feature performances by Country up-and-comer Brett Eldredge and Southern rock group Blackberry Smoke.

The free concert and street party will take place on Lower Broadway between 1st and 5th avenues. Striking Matches will kick off the festivities with a performance at 6:30 p.m., immediately followed by a raising of Nashville’s own 15-foot-tall red Music Note. The show will be emceed by Storme Warren, Sirius XM Radio personality and host of Great American Country’s Headline Country. Revelers will count down to the New Year with the “Music Note Drop®”, triggering a fireworks display and confetti cannons as it reaches the midnight mark.

Sponsors of this year’s New Year’s Eve ‘Bash on Broadway’ include McDonald’s, The Governor’s Highway Safety Office: Booze It & Lose It, Advance Financial 24/7, Miller Lite, Coors Light, Jack Daniel’s and Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint. Further details about the event will be announced. For the most up-to-date information, visit www.visitmusiccity.com/newyearseve.

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Kopecky Family Band
First drawn together amid a college dorm ‘pass the guitar’ session in 2007, co-founders Kelsey Kopecky and Gabe Simon quickly realized they shared something beyond their alma mater. Within months they wrangled the rest of their sonic siblings – Steven Holmes on lead guitar, David Krohn on drums, Markus Midkiff on cello, and Corey Oxendine on bass. The result is a versatile group, with bandmates often swapping instruments without a second thought, creating an emotive, adventurous and energetic environment onstage. Over the past five years there have been three EPs (Embraces, The Disaster and Of Epic Proportions) as well as a split 7” with Seattle’s Ivan & Alyosha and revelatory performances at the Next Big Nashville and SXSW festivals. 2011 saw the Family on tour with artists including Devotchka and Gomez, and year-end accolades such as Paste naming them one of the ‘25 Best Live Acts’ and ‘20 Best New Bands’ of the year. After a co-headlining tour with The Lumineers, and performances at Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits festival, the band finally released its first full-length album, Kids Raising Kids. In 2013, the band made its major television debut with a performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and has continued to receive accolades from various outlets, including USA Today, NPR and New York Times, which likened the group to Fleetwood Mac; “intelligent and a bit edgy, but still mainstream.”

Striking Matches
Simply stated, Striking Matches, made up of Sarah Zimmermann and Justin Davis, came to Nashville to play music. Sarah, a Philadelphia native and Justin, from Atlanta, met when a professor at Belmont University paired them at random to play for a classroom full of guitar majors. The pair has been writing and performing ever since. Their influences range from Jerry Reed to the Beatles, John Mayer to Patsy Cline, and back again. It becomes more obvious every day that they were born to play music together. Their debut self-titled EP was produced by Luke Wooten (Dierks Bentley, Dustin Lynch) with all four tracks co-written by the band. The EP released October 2012 was named among iTunes "Best of 2012" and enabled the duo to score features with NPR and The Wall Street Journal. In December 2012, Striking Matches made their debut on the Grand Ole Opry where they have subsequently played more than fifteen times. The duo has had three songs featured on ABC's hit show "Nashville.” Striking Matches has shared the stage with John Hiatt, Hunter Hayes, Martina McBride, The Band Perry, The Fray, Billy Currington, Kip Moore, Ashley Monroe and many more. They were named a CMT Listen Up artist in September 2013 and became the first artist signed to the newly launched I.R.S. Records Nashville, with their debut full length effort to be released in 2014.

The Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp
The mission of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp is to maximize the economic contribution of the convention and tourism industry to the community by developing and marketing Nashville as a premier destination. Visit the NCVC’s website at www.visitmusiccity.com.